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Tag Archives: cat

It’s June, which means it’s officially wedding season! Now, at most weddings, the betrothed invite the people they care about most, but in this case, those people were cats.

Source: http://mashable.com/2016/05/19/cat-wedding/#53XQqJxfuGqP

Dominic Husson and Louise Véronneau both love cats, and so they wanted to celebrate their wedding with them. So, the couple from Montreal, Canada, flew to Parlier, California, near Fresno, to the Cat House on the Kings, a no-cage, no-kill cat sanctuary, where they performed a ceremony in front of about one thousand feline guests.

Two baby squirrels rescued by local police in Poltava, Ukraine have found shelter and love in the unlikely form of a cat taking on the role of mother. Oddly enough, the cat’s named is “Belka”, which in Ukrainian, translates to “squirrel.” I guess it was just meant to be. ^_^

The East Bay SPCA in Northern California has created “Meow“, an adorable and frankly tear-jerking parody of Adele‘s song “Hello” that speaks from a cat’s point of view.

The music video features adoptable kittens. The East Bay SPCA video promotes cat adoption while telling a silly, yet touching story of a little girl, woman and older gentleman’s visit in hopes of adopting a kitten. The kittens promise their potential adopters that they will do whatever it takes to be the best pets ever!

Lyrics:
Meow, it’s me.
I’m the cat / who’s your new best friend, / that you have yet to meet.
I am fluffy,/ and so cute.
They say that I don’t really smell, and
My purrs can do much healing.

Meow, can you see it?
We’ll be cuddling, / dreaming about all the fun we will have.
We can catch the laser, / and let it go,
And I think you so beautiful/ when I wake you up in the morning.
There’s such a future, between us,
If you just take me home…

Meow from the Inside
I promise you that I’ll try…
To keep you / toasty /in the coldest of nights.
And to give you/ a part / of what is me.

meow from the Inside
I promise you that I’ll try…
To be there/ for you/ in the worst of times
But you just have to /give me/ a chance to go home, to go home.

Thirteen years ago, a tiny tabby kitten arrived at Mid Hudson Animal Aid, a no-kill shelter in Beacon, New York. Shelter workers named the feral kitten Archie, and Archie grew up at the shelter, befriending the other cats, socializing litters of kittens and watching his feline friends leave again and again as they found their forever homes.

Archie was a staple at the rescue. It wasn’t until December, when the shelter shared a photo of him on its Instagram account, that volunteer Jennifer Blakeslee learned Archie had spent his life at the shelter.

“I had no idea,” she said. “See, he’s very feral. He does fine with other cats, but is terrified of people, which vastly reduces the likelihood of his getting adopted.”

Blakeslee had recently adopted one of Archie’s closest furry friends, a deaf, toothless, half-blind Siamese named Eddie, and Eddie’s departure had left Archie lonely and depressed. So Blakeslee, determined to find Archie a home of his own, helped Eddie write a letter to Santa. “I posted a photo of [Archie] and Eddie cuddling at the shelter to Instagram with a “Dear Santa” letter, and it went viral,” she said.

“Dear Santa, ” the letter reads. “I’d like you to meet Archie. He was my best friend when i was at the shelter that saved my life …He’s been at the shelter for THIRTEEN YEARS, ever since he was a kitten. That’s a human’s entire time in school, plus kindergarten. He’s very shy, but he’s also very sweet and gets along with other cats. And he really, really, really, really wants to find his forever home. And that’s what I want for Christmas, Santa.”

The photo of Archie and Eddie was shared hundreds of times on Instagram, and seen by people across the nation, including Chicago resident Jennifer Baird. “I understood that Archie socialized the majority of kitties at the shelter but was never chosen for a home. It broke my heart,” she said. “I saw that he was in New York and waited a day or so for someone to speak up as I live in Chicago.”

After a couple days of seeing people post again and again that they wished they could do something but couldn’t, Baird stepped in. “That’s when I responded to Jennifer and said I’ll take him. I’m in Chicago. I need help in getting him here to me.”

Baird has rescued numerous cats, often taking in abandoned ones she found on the street, and Archie was going to be her 14th rescue. The fact that he was feral didn’t faze her. “I have had feral cats and have a great understanding of their needs and embrace that,” she said.

It took several weeks for the shelter to coordinate travel, but soon a plan was in place. Archie would take a road trip to Chicago, as this would be better for the skittish senior cat. A couple of people volunteered to make the drive, and Archie passed his pre-transport vet check with no problem. The only hurdle left was the transport costs.

Blakeslee set up a YouCaring campaign with a goal of raising $750, and she shared it on Instagram with the hashtag #OperationBringArchieHome. “It got shared like mad, and we met our goal in less than an hour,” she said. “In fact, people kept donating, and as a result, we’ll be able to donate $250 to the shelter.”

With the money raised, Archie left New York on April 3 and slept for most of the two-day drive to his new forever home.

“During the weekend of the transport, I posted updates and photos throughout the day, and we had fans and followers all around the world rooting for this one little old tomcat,” Blakeslee said. “It was glorious.”

Archie has been home for a few days now, and Baird says he’s making good progress in adjusting to her and her other rescue cats. “I see that he wants to be friends with his new sisters and brother so badly, and I know this will happen over time. Everyone is getting adjusted, and right now we have time on our side,” she said.

Archie is no longer hiding very much, and he enjoys spending time in his new cat bed. He’s even come within a few inches of Baird while eating his treats.

“Archie is like my other feral,” she said. “They want their love and affection to come from their siblings — not humans. He has to develop trust, and I want him to know that this relationship is about his safety and creature comforts — not about me having an affectionate kitty.”

Baird says she’s still shocked by the outpouring of support she’s received on social media, but she’s grateful for all the kindness being sent her way. “My biggest thank you is to Jennifer. She stood up and told Archie’s story. She’s the hero. Without her, Archie’s life may as well have ended in the shelter where it began.”

Blakeslee hopes that Archie’s story will inspire other people to adopt shelter cats, especially those that are often overlooked. “The message here is that every cat deserves a chance — the senior cats and the special-needs cats,” she said. “The effort involved in caring for them becomes completely worth it when they start to trust you and start treating your home like it’s their home.”

Tina Dorschel had the wildlife encounter of her life, as she nearly collided with a Florida panther along a wooden path at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a wildlife preserve in the heart of the Everglades. Video from the encounter shows the panther approaching as Dorschel gasps in terror, but it soon became clear that the feeling was probably mutual, and thank heaven, Tina went unscathed! Phew!

A secret photo shoot deep in the forests of Malaysian Borneo is helping researchers determine just how many marbled cats (rare, tree-climbing felines) live in the region, according to a new study, published online on March 23 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Marbled cats (Pardofelis marmorata) are extremely elusive creatures. To get a better idea of the cats’ stomping grounds, the researchers placed camera traps in eight forests and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

After four months of secret, motion-triggered infrared photography, the researchers found that marbled cats are most numerous in the lowlands where the forest is undisturbed, though surprisingly, they did find a few cats in selectively logged areas.

“We show that marbled cats can still survive in logged forests,” said study lead researcher Andrew Hearn, a doctoral candidate at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “This lends further weight to the argument that such disturbed forests are important to the conservation of biodiversity and should be preserved wherever possible.”

Little is known about the cats, which are named for their marble-patterned fur. They live in dense tropical forests, and are rarely seen, except for the odd camera-trap sighting. Perhaps that’s because the species is listed as “near threatened,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.

In the new study, the researchers used the surreptitiously taken photos to identify individual cats and estimate the species’ population density and distribution. They found that the lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area had about 19.5 cats per 39 square miles (100 square kilometers). Tawau Hills Park had fewer: about seven cats per 39 square miles. The Tabin Wildlife Reserve, which was selectively logged from 1969 to 1989, had an estimated density of about 10 cats per 39 square miles.

These estimates provide “tentative evidence” that undisturbed, lowland hill forests have the highest densities of marbled cats, Hearn said. Other areas, including disturbed lowlands and undisturbed highlands, had lower densities of the cats, he said.

The camera traps didn’t record any marbled-cat sightings within the plantations, although one cat was spotted walking along the forest-plantation boundary, the researchers added. They also photographed cubs in the Tabin North, Tawau and Ulu Segama forests.

The results of this exhaustive study suggest that the marbled-cat population may be somewhat higher in northern Borneo than it is elsewhere, but more studies are needed to verify this, Hearn said. For instance, researchers could use camera traps in other places in which the cats are found in the Indomalayan ecorealm, a region extending from eastern India and Nepal to Yunnan province, China; and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

But enforced regulations could increase the number of Borneo’s marbled cats even more. Although poaching is illegal, the researchers found used shotgun cartridges in seven of the eight forests. However, they didn’t come across any evidence that poachers are shooting marbled cats, the scientists wrote in the study.

Laws governing logging and forest conservation may also help preserve the population of marbled cats, Hearn said. “We provide further evidence that logged forest may still be used by these cats, and should be preserved,” he said.